


Apart and Together

by voidfruit



Series: Start Anew (Cheat Police) [3]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 00:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3431987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidfruit/pseuds/voidfruit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Go to the one you miss. Love them. Cherish them. Never leave them again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Remember?

“So, I was thinking, we could have a bunch of rooms down below, that we could… are you listening, Sips?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Yeah.”

Truth be told, he wasn’t. Instead, he’d been looking at Sjin, staring at him. He was dressed in his spacesuit again. His eyes bounced and gleamed as he talked of their ambitions, excited, almost giggling at the thought of the future.

Sjin smiled slyly and nudged Sips. “No, you aren’t,” he complained, leaning in closer. “Listen up, Sipsy…” he chided.

Sips straightened, almost biting his tongue as he roused. He felt a warm feeling at the beginning of his throat, an ecstatic yell that had been deferred.

Sjin furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “You okay, Sips?”

“Oh. Uh, it’s just… heh. You haven’t, uh…” Sips blinked, swallowed nervously. He didn’t know that he had reacted. “You haven’t called me that in a long time,” he admitted. “Eh, uh… ‘Sipsy’,” he added on.

Sjin’s eyes trailed to the ground quickly, and then let his lips purse into a smile, looking into Sips’ eyes. “I guess I haven’t, huh?”

Sips chuckled half-heartedly, becoming filled with happiness, but quickly after, feeling defeated, like a sandbag that had been slashed across its sides. “No, but, it’s okay, I mean… not like, I-“

“Sipsy.” Sjin blinked slowly, encircling Sips’ hand with his. “Hey,” he greeted softly.

Sips heard his heartbeat in his ears, pausing again to listen to the sound of Sjin saying his name, before finding himself wrapped in a hug, his head over Sjin’s shoulder and thick arms around his torso. He leaned in close, shutting his eyes.

“God, how long has it been, Sjin?” Sips muttered, pressing his nose into Sjin’s neck, holding back tears.

Sjin grinned, a beautiful goddamn sight, the tears he’d not even attempted to hold back trickling down his cheeks. “Too long.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you more.”

Sips opened out of the hug, placing a gentle hand to Sjin’s neck and chin, twirling a finger around a strand of auburn hair. “You’ve let your hair grow longer,” he noticed.

“Yeah. I- I could cut it, if you want, if that-“

Sips shook his head, “No. No, this is okay. I… it sort of reminds me of the Deep Space Nine days,” he breathed.

“The days when I couldn’t build,” Sjin scoffed, pulling down Sips’ arm.

“Hey,” Sips nudged Sjin, “DS9 was fantastic.”

“Shut up.”

“And so was Crappington!”

“Beaverend.”

Sips bit his lip slightly, beaming. “Why the hell did we split up, Sjin?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was the fucking worst idea ever.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder?” Sjin offered, a questioning quirk in his voice.

“Too fond,” Sips corrected, holding Sjin’s hand again.

“Oh, yeah. That’s right, you fired me,” Sjin mumbled passively, turning his head away from Sips.

“Because you were busy with other things!”

“Othe- the farm? You fired me because of that?!”

“Yeah! Sjin, you had your own thing going on. A thing that’s… better than… what SipsCo could ever be.”

Sjin was silent for a second, considering this. “You think I can’t handle two things at a time?” he grumbled playfully, looking back to Sips.

“No. It’s just-“ Sips sighed, burrowing his face in his hands. “Everything’s gone to shit since you’ve left, Sjin, and I don’t want to…”

“What?” Sjin asked quietly.

He lifted his head, staring back into Sjin’s eyes. “I don’t want to wake up one morning and find you gone again.”

“I won’t leave, Sips, I won’t.”

“Yeah, you say that, but your farm- I mean have you seen your farm? It’s so beautiful, it’s so warm, so colorful and… comforting. Like a fairy tale. Like you. Why wouldn’t you leave me for that?”

Sjin mumbled as he traced a pattern into the side of his leg, “Might be because I love you.”

Sips looked up, smiling. “Might be because I love you, too.”


	2. Of Course You Do.

"Damn, we were a good duo."

Sjin smirked. “Agreed.”

“No, I mean like, really good.” Sips smiled mischievously. “Remember all those crappy things we did to Honeydinc?”

Sjin snickered. “Honeydinc. Almost forgot about that, yeah. When we messed with their to-do list.”

“‘Make Sjin pancakes’,” Sips quoted. “I would have done that for you, we didn’t need to put that there.”

“It was fun, though. Hey, remember when we killed Nilesy?”

Sips grinned, “Pfft. Something to do with William Shatner, wasn’t it?”

Sjin blinked, looking back at Sips. “And him being Scottish.”

“Red matter,” Sips noted.

Sjin curled his lip, narrowing his eyes in amusement. “You ever want to do something like that again?”

“Maybe. If we don’t get banned for it, you dumb-dumb.”

“Yeah… still,” Sjin snickered.

“It just kept sucking, and sucking, and sucking…”

“And sucking, oh my god, sucking…”

“Shipping and receiving, eh? What’re you doing to me..”

Sjin leaned in closer, resting his chin on Sips’s shoulder. “We had some good times together.” His expression turned solemn, all of a sudden. “I’m sorry we never made it.”

“Sjin…”

“No, I really mean it.” He looked up at Sips with those big blue eyes… those neon-filled stars Sips had become so accustomed to. “I’m sorry.”

“Aw, don’t go breaking my heart, Sjin,” Sips moaned, turning his head awkwardly away.

“Well, come on! I left you, okay… and I didn’t mean it.”

“I left you, too.”

Sjin looked to the ground. “That was different.”

“How so?” Sips challenged.

“Because I left you first.”

“Leaving each other isn’t a competition, Sjin.”

“No, it’s- I was… I didn’t… I wasn’t focused on SipsCo, as you said, um… I shifted my attention to, to the farm, and-“

“Noooo,” Sips moaned. “No, no, nooooo…” He laid down on the stone brick wall as if he was a little kid, refusing to move a muscle.

“What?”

“That’s- I don’t care about SipsCo, Sjin.”

Sjin looked as though he had just swallowed a fly. “Wha-what?!”

“No, no, I mean, I care about it, you know? It’s my business, of course I care about it. But- SipsCo isn’t a, it’s not a priority. I don’t care about SipsCo when you’re on the playing board. I don’t… SipsCo wouldn’t be the same…” He corrected himself, “it isn’t the same… without you.”

Sjin’s eyes were watering again. “Oh, Sipsy…”

"No, I mean it. When I say SipsCo, I don’t mean the company. I don’t mean the dirt, Sjin. I mean…" A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I mean… SipsCo with you, Sjin. Building up the factory, the secret base.” He grinned. “The skyscraper, Jesus. Just…” He closed his eyes. “Being able to be here with you… talking with you. Without  _you_ , it’s not… it doesn’t feel like SipsCo. I don’t want just an empire, Sjin. I want to be holding your hand at the top of it all.”

“I was going to build us a penthouse,” Sjin mumbled.

“What?”

“Or maybe just a house,” he added quickly, a little louder this time. “With big windows, and blue and orange drapes, and, um… a double bed,” he smiled hopefully. “Carpeting. Mahogany doors,” he pursed his lips. “I was going to come back to you, to SipsCo, I swear, after I was happy with the farm, and we, we were going to pick up right where we left off,” Sjin was almost tripping over his words, he was speaking so fast, “I-I mean that, Sips, I-“

“We can still do that now, Sjin.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but shut it closed almost immediately. His eyes darted from the ground and back up to meet Sips’ gaze. “Not at SipsCo,” he conceded.

“Np, but here,” Sips motioned around them. “We can… we can start over.”

“Again?” Sjin smirked skeptically. Sips faltered. Sjin was right with that statement. They’d “started again” so many times now, it felt like they were a record on repeat.

Nevertheless, Sips ignored the comment, taking Sjin’s hand in his own. “We’ll do it. And if we… fail, or, I don’t know, some shit happens to us,” he tilted his head up slightly to into Sjin’s blue eyes with his own coffee ones, a promise in his gaze, “at least we’ll be together.”

The words seemed to fall on Sjin like a rain of needles, as he slammed into Sips, charged with emotion. He took shaky breaths and shaky sobs into the hollow of Sips’s shoulder and neck, wrapping his arms tightly around the man as he did so. Sips slowly brought his own thick arms to Sjin’s torso, pressing his fingertips to his back as he did so, holding him close.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Sjin murmured, his auburn beard bristling against Sips’ skin. It was a feeling Sips had gotten used to over the years, a feeling that now, sitting here on the stone, felt as if it completed him. Everything was safe as long as he had Sjin resting on him.

“You could never lose me,” Sips joked, “I’ll be around to annoy you for a long time.”

“No, not… I mean when you were-“ his voice cracked slightly, “- _gone_ , gone. When…”

Sips’ mind wandered in confusion before he comprehended what Sjin was talking about, coming to a realization. “When I- oh.” His perplexed expression quickly changed, his mouth open slightly and eyebrows knit together in an upside-down V.

Not when he was gone, as in, when Sips fired him… when he was gone, as in, he was  _gone_. Vanished. Abducted to Mars.

The thought had never crossed Sips’ mind, how hard it must have been for Sjin… How’d he find out that Sips was gone? Had he just woken up one day, and found an empty space in the bed? Did he wait there on Slime Island, just waiting to hear Sips’ voice again? That he’d come back? That he’d, one afternoon, come clambering up the ladder, his grey scowl peering over the side as he yelled about how he got ambushed by a slime that fell from the island, or that the pipes connecting the chests to the quarry were entangled? That Sjin’d hoped that he would just appear like that, and he’d run up to him and hug him, and kiss him, and run his fingers through Sips’ hair as he held him close to his heart, feeling his wrists for pulse and checking his eyes for life?

But it hadn’t happened like that.

Sjin had found Sips to be gone somehow, maybe waited. Maybe grew tired of waiting. Did he finish the rocket? How’d he even get to Mars? They were nowhere near the moon, much less the red planet itself… he must have had to get the transport from somewhere else. Honeydinc, or JAFFA, whatever the fuck they called themselves now? What had he done to get something as valuable as… as a ride across the solar system?

And how did he react when he found him? Cold, unmoving.  _Frozen_ in place, an expression of fear and horror, as he was literally petrified. Did he rush up to him? Did he trace his stone-cold cheeks in agony, staring into his lifeless eyes with desperation before draping himself over the statue, sobbing? Sjin had come all this way, just to find Sips in his state of… whatever it was.

Sjin had devoted himself, fought as hard as he could to save Sips, to bring him that so that they could be together… and Sips had let him go, shoved him away. Not even thinking of the hell Sjin had gone through.

Sjin tried to smile against his tears, holding Sips’ shoulders as he brought him to a forearm’s length apart. He took another shaky breath, exhaling. “You’re warm again,” Sjin sniffed. “Your heart’s beating.” He cupped Sips’ cheeks and grinned, tears running down his own rosy, neatly-tanned ones. “Your eyes… and you still smell like dirt. You’ve always smelled like dirt.”

Sips scoffed playfully. “You don’t smell so great yourself, orchard boy.”

Sjin shook his head, wiping his tears away with his arm. “It’s a good smell. The finest SipsCo dirt,” he straightened and said in an esteemed tone. He breathed out again, this time more stable. “It’s just nice to have you back, Sipsy.”

“It’s nice being back,” Sips looked up cautiously, as if Sjin wouldn’t return his gaze. “It’s nice being with you again,” he whispered.

Sjin outstretched his arms, Sips laying down on his chest. “Come here, I just want to hold you for a bit.”

They reclined against the wall, Sjin staring down at Sips fondly. “You batard, playing with my heart.”

“Is the factory cold at night?” Sjin asked innocently, as if he could care less.

Sips shrugged. “Sorta. I guess maybe more for Xeph and Turps, they sleep downstairs in the employee rooms.”

Sjin’s eyes widened momentarily. He and Sips had always slept in the same bed. Employees… so Xephos and Turps were… Sjin tried to suppress a beaming face.

“I don’t really care much about the heat. Well, I guess maybe. I don’t get much sleep anyhow,” he confessed. “It doesn’t… I don’t know. Nothing feels right about it.”

“Feels right? What do you mean?”

“There’s just… it doesn’t feel like SipsCo.”

“What’s the difference?”

Sips smirked, “For one, SipsCo –  _our_  SipsCo – looked like the pearly gates of heaven compared to the new, er, factory.

“Really?” Sjin inquired disarmingly.

“I miss your architecture. “

Sjin’s heart skipped a beat. He almost forgot to breathe, muffling a cough. “Y-you, wh-what?” he stuttered, chirping his words.

“I miss your architecture,” Sips repeated, burrowing his face into Sjin’s chest, half-muttering his words. “The way everything’s laid out. You build the frames first, and switch materials, and use stairs for the roofs and… I don’t know, Sjin. Jesus. You’re the only person who can make cobblestone make look good, and- it’s a nice thing to be familiar with, is all.”

Sjin bit down on his tongue to keep himself from bursting into happy tears again. “You… really notice all those things?” his voice was nothing more than a squeak.

“Yeah, you know. I can sort of tell when you’ve built something. There’s certain details in the work, a style of…” his eyes traild off thinking about the subject, reconstructing images of the SipsCo compound and Sjin’s farm in his mind. “You put yourself into your work, and it shows.”

“And you miss it?”

“Of course I do. I miss a lot of things about you, Sjin.”

“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Sips, you know that?”

Sips moaned, “Ah god, Sjiiiiiiiiin…”

“No, I mean it,” Sjin purred, nestling his head on top of Sips’. “That was… really nice.” He smiled. “Thank you.”

“It’s true. I’m not going to lie to you, Sjin. I miss talking to you, and your stupid grin, get that outta here,” he playfully swatted at Sjin’s beard, “and your eyes… and your rosy cheeks and… I miss the hum of the sorting facility and our bed, and…”

Sjin chuckled. “Remember when we pushed our beds together that time at Honeydinc?”

“Yeah, and freaking Lalna walked in on you- oh god, Sjiiin…” Sips was smiling, laughing.

“You couldn’t sleep.”

Sips scoffed, “You couldn’t either.”

“Yeah, but you couldn’t first,” Sjin reminded. He looked at Sips, his expression hopeful. “Are we going to have our beds together this time too, Sipsy?”

“Of course we are, you big dumb-dumb,” Sips remarked, ruffling Sjin’s hair softly and kissing him affectionately on the cheek.

“Well, I just… I don’t know. I’m not being pushy, by wanting us to sleep together, you know, I- you’re not tired of me, or-“

Sips pressed his face close to Sjin’s, their warm breath on the other’s cheeks. “I will  _never_  get tired of you.”


End file.
